Great Leaps?

Dee,

I have not uses the younger version of Great Leaps, but the grade 3-5 ONLY has the child say the sounds, not letters. Are you sure about this?

Janis

I regularly give the hows and whys of Great Leaps, but it takes me three hours. Great Leaps’ K-2 program uses behaviorist measurement systems and reinforcers and a reading hierarchy (established by current leaders in direct instruction and reading research). We use letter naming first of all from a common sense perspective - spelling. We spell with letter recognition, not sound recognition.

Letter recognition is a well-recognized tool skill for eventual reading. Tell me why not to teach letter sounds. It lends itself well for the next step - and K-2 has it, phonics - beginning with sounds in isolation.

We use the timer not for the creation of speed demons but because we know through research what number of sounds per minuite or words per minute equal profiency in that area - and we teach to proficiency one step at a time. The methods used in GL are all well-proven through about twenty-five years of research.

Since Great Leaps only takes about five minutes per day for your child, it supplements well (as it was intended) with other interventions. I hope this answer helps. Ken C (author - GL)

Some children are confused by letter names when learning to read. Since letter names are not necessary for reading, the risk of confusion can be eliminated by teaching only sounds until the child can read. At that point, letter names can be taught to facilitate spelling. The reasoning behind this approach is explained more thoroughly in the book “Reading Reflex”.

Would it not be possible to modify Great Leaps to use letter sounds rather than letter names? This would make it compatible with Phono-Graphix. Then you would have two programs working together, instead of fighting with each other.

Nancy

Nancy,
Modification is the very nature of education and eventually leads to research. Both issues have been researched over the past twenty years - having seen no clearcut winner I chose to go traditonal (as did Cecil Mercer). In the Great Leaps remedial programs (for grades 3+) we begin with the sounds. In the Great Leaps K-2 program, we went with the latest research for emergent readers and chose to teach the letter names. Not being fanatics, we are certainly not upset at such small modifications - especially in a country where noted educators are still refusing to use direct instruction to help dysfunctional readers.

Ken

My son did learn to spell by using letter sounds. I think it actually worked out very well.

Letter names were confusing for him when he started reading. I actually had to ban letter names for awhile. He uses letter names now just fine.
He really needed to key into the letter sounds first.

That’s what I like to hear! Maybe dee can take your comments to her SLP.

There are many ways to teach reading. It just seems useless to expose a child — especially an at-risk child — to competing methodologies.

Nancy

This is how I use a fluency program. First, I get the child decoding at or almost on grade level and then I use a fluency program. I understand that Great Leaps is an excellent program but I teach high school and I use Read Naturally. The child has to really be able to decode first and fluency will follow. If you do it this way, there will be no competition between methodologies because when he knows the sound/letter relationship, he can learn the letter names because he will have to when he starts to spell.

Hi Ken,
I appreciated reading your latest post, but must disagree that it’s okay to teach letter names to a new reader. You said you approach it from a common sense perspective. Whose common sense would that be? Not mine.

I watch my students every day struggling to make sense of sounds vs. letter names. Many of them will say the sound “m,” only to then say “yeah, EM…yeah,that’s right….m.” It’s an unnecessary step and very confusing to them.

You say you use letter recognition to teach spelling. Since kids learn to read first and then to spell, I teach reading FIRST, using sounds, then spelling, still using sounds. No letter names ever, until they can read. Learning letter names comes fast after that, but they have no place in the learning to read arena.

My students come from every program out there, GL among them. The problems are always the same.

You also spoke about phonics and its teaching of sounds in isolation. Perhaps that’s why I’ve found Phono-Graphix to be the fastest, best method to teach reading. Sounds in isolation are meaningless. That is common sense to me and many others who use PG. Sounds should be taught in the context of words, where meaning is generated.

I don’t intend to put down GL, as I’m sure it has helped many kids. But,
I remediate kids, also and know exactly what issues they have. Letter names for a child struggling is deadly. Get them back to the sounds only and they read fast and well.

You asked ” why not teach the letter names?” I’ve given my answer. If you disagree, we can just agree to disagree. I’ve also kept current on the last 25 yrs. of studies and feel the way I do because of the studies and my own experience with over 100 students.

Respectfully,
]
Leslie in S.CA.

Leslie,
Agreeing to disagree is fine - this is really a minor issue with whole language fanatics destroying kids by the thousands. Also understand, my work is based upon my daily work on the frontlines with many kids. Most (not all) of my career has been with middle school students with significant learning and behavior problems. Believe me, I also have done research in my classroom and designed help the way I saw it. In a world which often refuses or neglects the assistance many children need, we are both on the right side of an interesting debate. Ken

I agree with you entirely. I also work in remediation; as a private tutor out of the system, I get the kids that everybody else can’t do anything with and has given up on. They learn to read with sounds, and **they learn to spell with sounds**. This is the logical way to spell. Spelling with letter names is grossly inefficient because it goes away from the code instead of using it. True, at a *much* later date you may need to spell your name out loud on the phone, but that’s a way in the future; right now I’m teaching the oo sounds to a kid who got to grade 4 without anyone mentioning vowels, and teach him to spell hook and boot, which make sense with an “oo” and not an oh-oh.

Having had a career mostly with abused kids, I know the tendency of systems to give up on kids. It’s a shame. I made a name for myself by being a small piece (never surrendering) in bringing about major changes in children’s lives. My first objectives had to always be ending the violence, then came reading.

Ken

Dear Ken, On this, we agree 100%. Thanks for the post.
Leslie

I really like Great Leaps but I’d say, since it’s a fluency program, I wouldn’t want to use it till I was certain the child’s decoding was well under way and meeting with success. I don’t know that I’d use it with a struggling 6 year old who hasn’t yet learned letter names.

I use Great Leaps with kids who can decode fairly well but are reading slowly. At that point, they’re past the stage of learning letter names and are working on developing automaticity. I’d teach the letter names FIRST - entirely separate from any fluency program like Great Leaps, especially if the child is as young as 6. MANY 6 year olds are still slowly sounding out words by saying their sounds. They’re not ready for a fluency program.

I agree entirely. Sounding out letter by letter is GOOD for age 6. Control first, speed later.

I just wrote a long reply before logging in and it was lost !!!

I’ll try again but it won’t be as long nor as thought out -!!!

Dr. Cecil Mercer wrote the K-2 book which goes all the way back to phonemic (sound) awareness. I successfully taught both my sons to read with this. Brooklyn, NY (Eileen Marzola) and Fort Lauderdale, FL (Eleanor Goldberg) have had successes. I gave the names of these two experts because I consider their expertise in reading far greater than my own - my expertise area is reading behavior.

GL was not written as a fluency program. From the behavioral perspective, fluency is a given - too bad the rest of reading world is finally coming to see its importance. Note: we didn’t set the standards for speed, but for proficiency! This is the entire reason for timing - so we can accurately measure and see relevent growth. Those who do not assess with time are sailing without instruments. It can be done, but I wouldn’t trust the captain.

Great Leaps owes its existance to the work of precision assessment and teaching - thank-you Ogden Lindsley (Univ. of Kansas) and Tom Lovitt (Univ of Washington).

I would like to write more but am tired and on pain meds. Ken

Here is why there should be No Letter Naming.

We are born with a set number of neurological pathways. The number doesn’t increase over our lifetime, but the connections between them increase and get stronger as we acquire new skills.

As our student reads the word ‘cat’ for example, the message travels around his brain and comes out of his mouth ‘cat’. Let’s say the message has to touch base with 1000 spots in order to be received correctly. )I’m sure it’s more like 3 million - and no doubt someone will correct me on that) But using this example if the message misses one spot and hits only 999 it won’t register as ‘cat’, but may come out as ‘tac’ or ‘act’ or maybe miss that word altogether.

As remedial teachers, our job is to increase the connections so that the message never ever misses. “How do we do that” I hear you all asking. Here is how.

1. We break the information down to its smallest possible components. The English language is made up of 44 sounds. Everything we have ever said or ever will say can be expressed in terms of those 44 sounds. There are many many ways to write each one, but until we can hear each sound as a distinct separate unit - and work with it as such, there is no point in going any further.
2. We practice that One Piece of information (one sound) using all the senses. Our student hears it, sees it, has the tactile sensation of the lips and tongue producing it - and the kinesthetic reinforcement of the hand and arm muscles as he writes it.
3. It’s this multi-sensory practice of these tiny components that makes for true deep learning, and this sets the foundation for all the unusual ways that these sounds are represented graphically, as the student’s knowledge of the English language becomes more complex. This is how our student attains ‘automaticity’ - and without that, reading fluency will be a very elusive goal for him.

Once we understand this process, it becomes obvious that it Has To Be only the sounds. There is no possible way that 2 pieces of information (both names and sounds) can be integrated into the neural connections at the same time. At this remedial stage the letter names (or any information other than that one small part) can be nothing but a hindrance to the entire language processing event.

Sorry I wrote so much, but this just seems so fundamental and yes, ‘common sense’ that I couldn’t let it go without putting in my 2 cents.

Eleanor

You write:

“Those who do not assess with time are sailing without instruments. It can be done, but I wouldn’t trust the captain. “

What it sounds like you are saying is that if a new, totally inexperienced captain is sailing in a thick fog, you would rather have him pump up the steam pressure and go full speed ahead, as long as he is watching the speed gauge, than have him go slowly and sound out the leads every few seconds. Sounds like the Titanic. I *hope* this is not what you are advocating.

I agree with most of what your said but feel the need to correct one thing.

We are born with a set number of neurons. Neurological pathways change well into old age.

Re: Sailing with instruments in the fog - I’d presume more sophisticated instruments than the steam gauge - radar for one….and where did totally inexperienced come from? The captains I named in my post were well-established professionals.

We’ve been sold a bill of goods in this country from “captains” who have sold us with their anecdotes - not data. We bought and a generation or two of children have suffered.

Rate is the universal measure of behavior - period.

Re: speed demons - only inexperienced novices or pure idiots teach reading speed for speed sake - reading speed is only one piece of fluency - as the world knows, we Southerners speak rather slowly - with tons of meaning often packed into a few words- yet, these rates are within fluency guidelines of established research. Proficiency rates vary considerably per individual - but we have learned some benchmarks for human performance - and we got those with accurate timed measurements. I have been arguing for timers for five years or so on this board and cannot get beyond step one - the Titanic analogy. The child need not be aware of the timer, but for there to be replicable research and the sharing of tactics - rate is essential. Sail blind if you wish - but sharing your accomplishments over wide spaces will be difficult.

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Post Edited (05-28-03 17:42)

Well, I highly resent being told that I am flying blind.

I have plenty of extremely accurate measures — error count, guesses, hesitations and re-reads, comprehension, questions asked by the student — all let me pinpoint exactly what is going on with the student’s reading. Time is a very gross measure that tells me very little.
The only thing that time tells me for certain is that when a kid in the stage I work with tells me he finished fast, he is faking.

I, as well as many of the other people here, as the title of the board says, are *teaching* reading. We are not talking about experienced captains, we are talking about ultra-novices without a clue, in a total fog. Many of them are running one engine forward and one in reverse and going in circles. You want them to go fast; I and many others here figure it would be a good idea if you could *read* first, before you try to read fast.

Many of us who work with kids in bad academic trouble are constantly meeting those who have been made even worse by speed pressure; if they go slowly they can read somewhat, but they try to go fast and botch every second word. I am constantly harping at my students that when they do a test, it’s a lot better to get seven questions right than ten wrong. That’s the Titanic syndrome — gotta hurry up and finish, the goal is finishing, forget quality in favour of quantity.

Sure, it would be nice if they got the speed up to where they can finish a book in a few days. *After* they can read a simple sentence without errors, and are not showing signs of extreme stress and stress-induced illness.

Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, have I ever posted that I use timers to get children reading fast. You will see I want to build up their reading speeds so we can get comprehension, so we can get fluency. It has been well-researched that reading speeds must approach conversational rates for their to be comprehension.

Again, we do not use the timers to create speed demons. We use the timers to get an accurate measure of progress.

I am Southern. We do not believe in hurrying anything - except maybe leaving work. I also use a timer to measure errors per minute - and I assure you I do not want to see speed increases there.

My mother could take a temperature with her hand. I prefer using a tool with my own children, a thermometer. Of course, I could reject the tool if I chose to - but my rejection does not say one way or the other about the validity of the obtained data. I could also complain about the dangers of mercury and tell what mercury poisoning does to a child - but the such is irrelevent to the issue at hand.

I have taught or observed teachers, parents, aids, peers, etc on and on for over twenty-five years and HAVE YET to encounter one child in my experience suffering from our attempts at forcing speed - WHY?? Because we do not force speed - we teach to fluency through a series of successes. If anyone is using Great Leaps to force speed upon an unable child, then they are grossly misuing my work. You may be able to tell from this post that I am getting frustrated at the misconceptions of my work and my intentions in this line.

I still will teach the abc’s by letter name to emergent readers and then work on phonics. A great body of great researchers (science not anecdotally based) hold to these theories and I still see no reason to go to sounds first with young emergent readers - and have not encountered the confusion (long-term) noted in above posts. Their order does not upset me. I am upset over the contention that the use of timers is inappropriate, unnecessary, and even harmful.

Sorry if the sailing metaphors were fuzzy - I didn’t start that line of thought.